Find the Best Financial Advisor: Read About Ways the Internet Can Help You Make the Right Decisions

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No one intentionally hires a bad financial advisor. So why do so many consumers fire their advisors in less than two years? After spending 28 years in the financial service industry, I believe the No. 1 reason is the advisors created high expectations to win the relationships and then failed to meet the expectations they created. In other words, the investor didn’t find the best financial advisor.

There is a bottom-line to this unfortunate reality. Creating expectations is a sales tactic. Unfortunately, the consumers fell for it when they selected the advisors with the best sales pitches.

You can avoid this unfortunate mistake if you follow our 5-step process that will help you select the advisor with the best qualifications and not the advisor with the best pitch. Here is what you should do:

Use the Internet to find financial advisors who meet your requirements

Use the Internet to research the advisors’ credentials and ethics

Contact your top candidates to conduct pre-interviews

Conduct in-depth interviews to learn more about advisors

Select the advisor with the best qualifications

Wall Street has controlled the selection of financial advisors for decades by turning it into a sales contest. That is not in your best interest. You want to find the best financial advisor, not the best salesman.

The game changer is the Internet. It gives you access to vast amounts of public data that you can use to research financial advisors. The information is free and you can maintain your anonymity while you conduce your research.

Why do we call the Internet a game changer? Because it transfers control from Wall Street back to you where it belongs. You are no longer limited to the verbal information that is provided by financial advisors.

The Internet gives you access to information that was controlled by financial advisors. If they had anything to hide, they certainly would not provide this information to you. In fact, there is term for this frequently-used sales tactic – it is called omission. This is what advisors don’t tell you because you may not buy what they are selling.

Paladin Registry is your best resource on the Internet for information about advisors. It provides a lot of free information about advisors as well as free tools that help you make better selection decisions. No registration is required to view the information or use the tools.

The book is an easy read that minimizes the use of financial jargon that you might find confusing. It is loaded with information and guides for using the Internet to find, research and contact financial advisors.

I co-authored this book with Jonathan Dash, a longtime member of the Paladin Registry. While I represented the interests of consumers who are seeking financial advisors, Jonathan represented the interests of high-quality financial professionals like himself. His perspective was invaluable, as high-quality advisors have to compete with low-quality advisors and the consumers don’t know the difference.

Jonathan and I are passionate about educating investors. We have literally met with thousands of consumers who unknowingly selected the wrong financial advisors. The more consumers know about advisors, the higher the probability they will make the right choices when they select advisors.

This knowledge also empowers consumers to take control of the process they will use to select advisors. If they don’t take control, the advisors will, and when that happens, the risk of selecting the advisor with the best sales skills goes up exponentially.

My first book launched the Registry and made it a primary resource for consumers who rely on advisors who will influence or control their financial decisions. I decided to write it after hearing story after story that described how bad financial advice had made a stock market crash even worse. People I knew lost 50 to 65 percent of their assets because they selected the wrong financial advisor.

I knew there was nothing I could write that would change the business practices of the firms that make up the industry we call Wall Street. But, I could provide the information consumers needed to protect their own interests and provide a list red flags (warnings) so they knew what to watch out for.

“5 Steps for Selecting the Best Financial Advisor” is now available on Amazon, and for this week only, you can buy the Kindle version for just 99 cents! After April 27, standard prices apply.

This book a must-read if you are thinking about hiring your first financial advisor. The book is also a must-read for consumers who are replacing financial advisors. You do not want to repeat past mistakes when you select financial advisors. This time around, you want to ensure you find the best financial advisor.

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Paladin Registry is an independent, educational resource designed to help investors who rely on financial advisors and financial planners to help them accumulate and preserve assets for retirement. Since 2003 Paladin Registry has been providing retirement planning resources as well as information to assist finding a financial advisor or finding a financial planner. Paladin Registry has been featured in Kiplinger, Business Week, Forbes, The Washington Post, Yahoo Finance and has been seen in numerous other leading financial news and information websites.